


i remember the face (but i can't recall the name)

by theformerone



Series: tumblr prompts [12]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, akatsuki is a freedom fighting organization that started out as a babysitter's club essentially, idk if this is modern setting or not, in which minato and kushina are off screen freedom fighters, in which naruto is a member of akatsuki and so is everyone you love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 00:25:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14821752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: For prompts no. 37. “You seem somewhat familiar. Have I threatened you before?” and 28. “Excuse me. I have to go make a scene.”He's in the middle of a job so he knows that now isn't the right time to be so hung up on a memory that keeps trying to escape him. But Naruto is pretty sure he knows this Gaara guy from somewhere. He just can't place it.





	i remember the face (but i can't recall the name)

Naruto is only about ninety percent sure he’s worked on a job with this guy before. He’s got sharp red hair, which isn’t all too uncommon to Naruto, considering his mom and his cousins, and his eyes are blue, which isn’t weird considering Naruto and his dad. But he does have a face tattoo and no eyebrows. Which would make a person stand out, y’know?

The trouble is, Naruto sees all kinds of freaky shit on the day to day that some redhead with a face tattoo wearing heavy eyeliner isn’t really the strangest thing he’s ever seen in his life. Which _sucks_  because he’s got the vaguest sense that he knows this guy from somewhere.

It wouldn’t bother him so much if the guy didn’t clean up so well. He somehow manages to pull off wearing a purple suit, something that not even Sasuke can do, and Naruto has seen him try. 

This Gaara guy manages to look completely disheveled and untrustworthy (the hair, the face tattoo, the complete and utter _lack of eyebrows_ ) and simultaneously like an _entire goddamn snack platter_  and it is a magic that Naruto does not even remotely understand. 

He’s gorgeous. Drop dead gorgeous. A quarter in a pocketful of dimes. Naruto isn’t sure what he did to get Konan’s favor for her to send him out on an assignment like this while Sakura and Hinata were out somewhere extorting millions from investment bankers too cocky to cover their tracks. Even Sasuke was stuck on a bodyguard detail. 

But Naruto got to wear a fancy suit and dance damn near glued to this guy. There’s no time to ask who he’s affiliated with or why Konan took out a contract with his employer. This isn’t really the place to ask anyway. Naruto’s just there to be arm candy, really, to be a distraction for Deidara’s coming shenanigans. Once he and Obito got things rolling, all Naruto had to do was slip out the back and hop into the van, switch places with Hidan so he could offer some extra muscle support, and wake up Shikamaru in case he was asleep at the monitors. Which he usually was. 

But he kind of wants to ask. Because Naruto never forgets a face. He gets used to odd looking ones, like Hidan’s freaky religious face paint, and Kakuzu’s eyes. But he doesn’t forget faces. And there’s something about this Gaara guy’s that he’s sure he knows from somewhere. 

“You seem somewhat familiar,” Gaara says. And his voice is all low rumble, quiet and raspy like he’s smoked all his life or like he shouted himself hoarse as a kid. That’s why Naruto’s got his own rasp, or at least that’s what his parents tell him. 

Naruto’s about to open his mouth, bat his blond eyelashes, and say something coy enough to trap this guy into bed when Gaara continues with, “Have I threatened you before?”

Naruto blinks. Because that - that isn’t really a barometer for assessing interpersonal relationships, is it? _Is it?_  It probably was for Sasuke. And Obito, too for that matter. And Deidara. And pretty much all of the people Naruto’s grown up with. With the exception of nearly all the women he had ever known, who were more likely to go ahead and hurt you without going through the trouble of threatening that they were going to do it. 

“I - I don’t believe you’ve had the pleasure,” Naruto stammers. “Though you may know one of my associates?”

Gaara hums, his gentle hold on the small of Naruto’s back neither increasing or decreasing with the question. 

“I don’t think so,” Gaara murmurs. “I know your eyes.”

And that’s the kind of thing that only guys in Ino’s trashy romance novels say. Not that Naruto would know. He’s never read them. Not even in high school. 

“You may have seen me in the brief before you came out for this job,” Naruto offers, carefully circumventing any mention of the very illegal activity he is about to partake in. He’s wired for his safety, and he knows that Shikamaru won’t cover for him if he says too much. 

“I did,” Gaara agrees. “I insisted on taking my brother’s place on this operation because I thought I knew you.”

From the corner of his eye, Naruto can see Obito, dressed as a waiter move across the room like he’s hunting something. He gives Naruto an imperceptible nod; two minutes until it was time. 

“Did you go to boarding school as a child?” 

Naruto blinks his gaze back to Gaara, surprised and not a little concerned. 

His parents were freedom fighters. They had been in jail almost as long as Naruto had been alive. When his mom got caught first, his dad put him with his godfather Jiraiya. Then when his father got caught, Jiraiya put him in boarding school. The visits to his parents in prison were few and far between, but Naruto has always known it was only going to be a matter of time before it all worked out. 

This job was one of many on the road to making that happen. His folks may still be behind bars, but the Yellow Flash and the Hot-Blooded Habanero hadn’t been as defanged as the feds hoped they were. 

“I went to one,” Gaara muses, voice soft. “In Ame. Where all unfortunate children are sent, so they say.”

It also happened to be where Akatsuki was based. And it was where the children of fighters like Naruto’s parents were sent when things got ugly at home. Naruto had already been out of his hometown before he was sent to Ame. Itachi had to smuggle Sasuke out of Konoha. Neji’s father had sent him before he was executed.

“I don’t know how my mother would feel about me saying it,” Naruto says with a chuckle, “but for a time, I was an unfortunate child.”

There was no aging out of the system, not really. You stayed for as long as you needed to. Akatsuki had started originally as a kind of daycare service, protecting the children of radicals as a service to the radicals themselves. It was only when the first generations of those children had gotten older that Akatsuki transformed into what it was today. 

Upstart brats like Naruto and his friends, ones that wanted to change the world that kept trying to kill their parents. 

Gaara leans in close, until they are dancing cheek to cheek. He’s arm against Naruto’s face, still leading them across the dance floor.

“I used to carry around a brown teddy bear,” Gaara says. “I never went anywhere without it.”

And the memory splits itself open before Naruto’s eyes. A small red haired boy, constantly watched over by a hawkish older brother and sister. His sad blue eyes, how he would call for his mother, for his father. And the teddy bear. 

“A black haired boy got tomato paste on it, and a blue eyed boy helped me clean it up.”

In Naruto’s ear there’s the sound of three sharp clicks, which is Shikamaru’s signal that it’s time to get to work. He desperately wants to ignore it in favor of the strange and wonderful man in front of him, who used to be a strange and terrified child. 

“I -,”

“Excuse me,” Naruto says, loathe to interrupt him. 

Gaara pulls back slowly so that he can look Naruto in the face when he speaks again. The intensity in his gaze isn’t uncomfortable. If anything, it’s only sincere. 

“Yes?” 

“I have to go cause a scene,” Naruto says sheepishly. “But I would like to talk to you again, if I can.” 

Gaara nods, at once understanding the situation. 

“I’ll ask my Tessen to speak to your Angel,” he replies, “to see if we could arrange a meeting under less … strenuous circumstances.”

Naruto beams at him, and Gaara’s intense expression softens somewhat. 

“I’d like that. Now if you’ll excuse me?”

He drops his hand off Gaara’s shoulder and moves to take his hand back from his, but Gaara doesn’t let go. 

“What kind of scene exactly do you need to cause?”

Naruto lifts an eyebrow. He’s very good at making distractions, and in the business of being obnoxious, two is always better than one. 

“Can you fake a heart attack?” 

Gaara tilts his head to the left. 

“No,” he replies. “But my older sister is epileptic, so I know the warning signs of a seizure.” 

Naruto lets out a low whistle, and guides his new partner to the center of the dance floor. 

“Alright, Mr. Uzumaki,” he says. “You’re my husband, if anyone asks.”

Gaara cracks a smile. 

“I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

Naruto gives Gaara’s hand a light squeeze, and he hopes that the rest of the guys won’t mind the extra in the van on their getaway ride.

**Author's Note:**

> 'tessen' meaning fan is temari's code name, and angel is konan's because we all know why


End file.
